Carnival Knees

Sleep sits like a secret at the edges of my eyelids, begging to give full life to itself. Begging to be released. Bruises form around the corners of my fingernails, a true sign that what I am holding onto is best let go. I am holding onto puffy clouds in the sky and the dust that falls from the stars. I am holding onto who we used to be. To our childhood memories.

I will always remember the rush of night air as it floods my lungs, releasing me from the hold of long past memories. I will remember the feeling of hands pitter-pattering across my back, arms wrapped tight in a hug. I will remember the way the moon rose over the blackened tips of the trees and the sound of our feet crunching over the gravel. I will remember the fog on the windshield, like a thousand tiny ghosts, and how my voice caught in my throat, sore from so many whirling emotions and the force of my raised voice. The sound of the laughter still picks up the hair at the nape of my neck. My toes still burn with the scar of the uneven floorboards.

These things slip under my skin, a way of preventing me from forgetting all that has happened.

Nostalgia rolls over the floor in the waves of thunder, in the lightning strikes that never fail to remind me of the time we all stood in my backyard and stared in awe at the electrical storm raging through the skies (and the sound of the word sorry, my temple still rings with the pressure of your voice). The fires that have filled our eyes slowly prance along the lines of my body, a reminder of all the nights I spent in your presence feeling not-quite-warm-enough. The scent of smoke caught in my hair is better than any lullaby and whenever I hear the rain fall I think of the time we spent dancing in it, proclaiming unrealistic love for each other, and crying for the many things we’ve lost. I can still remember the feeling of your shoulder blades beneath my hands and the way you shivered. The way we were all so sure that nothing could hurt us and laughed louder in the face of everything that frightened us.

How, plain and simple, we were only children.

Damn, I need to take some self-portraits tomorrow.

paradoxicalsentiments:

iluisindustries:

You know that moment when you’re reading a book and you just have to stop and bite your lip and squeal or sigh or close your eyes and wrinkle your nose and forehead and press the book against your heart and just like sit there and try to soak up the gorgeous literature via osmosis?

That’s my favorite part of reading. 

that’s why I read in the first place.

that’s why I need to start reading again.

(Source: tommyshawsboots)

I listened to the voice of your poetry; stanza after stanza wrapping around my wrist and holding me to the warm, dry earth. The sun prints a pattern of shadows and gold across my cheekbone and down the smooth lines of my clavicle – a claim to my body made by the sky. My scars turned to pictures, describing your words; turning over and over with the movement of your tongue, music made from the flesh of consonants and the sudden rounding of your vowels.

The moon is brighter than my headlights, the faded pink of the sunset mixing with the midnight blue backdrop for the stars. A light like the reaching hands of a hundred broken hearts. I’ve traveled this road so many times. The memories spanning the years of my life pressed between the rocks strewn along the side. Melancholy creeps up on me and sits like an old friend in the crook of my neck – planting kisses along my skin whenever the bitter outweighs the sweet, reminding me again and again that in this moment it is okay to forget the names of the places I’ve been. It’ll all come back eventually –

Goodnight May, good morning June

Stars rain down across the clear expanse of my windshield. Green light, go; across the layers of the night streaked roads. Back pain like a symphony to accompany your actions, joints creaking with the traveling of strangers. Sidewalks blur into black and white in your peripheral vision, paintings hung upside down on the canvas of your skull – the moving plates like those that shift beneath the earth. Constellations more familiar than the freckles on your own knuckles spread out over the dashboard, a sea rising from the dust of your long forgotten sorrows. The sound of your breathing piped through the stereo, shaking your bones, rattling the doors. The world comes to life, within itself creating another new home for you.